Web principles
3mon 27d ago by lemmy.world/u/bigFab in onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Advertising unethical
I'd say it's not inherently unethical. How else would you find out about options for a thing you need?
How current the ad industry works however, can die in a fire.
You can just search for it, you don't need ads for that. Ads is a really bad way to find out about options, because it's never about quality, it's all about appearance.
How would you know what to search for? Some advertising is fine - a sign for a restaurant or industry mailers or magazines, "related products", etc etc are all very tame forms of advertising. The problem is hyperintrusive advertising which has now spiraled so far into hell that it drives a model of data harvesting and content slop that's slowly tainting all access to information we have.
How would you know what to search for?
Because of the needs I have, when I am hungry ill search for recipes or restaurants. When my apartment needs cleaning ill search for cleaning supplies, when I am bored ill look up what movies are playing.
I actually can not come up with a single situation where advertisement would be needed or helpful in anyway. I also do not have a problem with smaller advertisement, but in my dreams they are all banned regardless. Won't be missing those.
Okay, to break down the point: search for them where?
I guess on the internet or in the store.
So how do people get on the internet or in the store? Heck, how do you know that the store exists in the first place (and if the store doesn't have what you need, what do you do?)
I'm just after a middle ground - the current insanity of advertising is obviously too much, but the idea of doing away with it entirely isn't feasible either. Burning all the advertising execs at the stake might be a good place to start in terms of reforming things...
Do you not have friends? Word of mouth recommendations exist.
Relevant XKCD:
The value of word of mouth advertising is the reason we have to deal with the hell that is astroturfing ad campaigns.
Not all word of mouth is advertising. While word mouth advertising is powerful, that argument is still just a straw man.
This seems like it's not going to be a productive conversation if you're going to accuse me of using a strawman argument.
All word of mouth advertising is advertising. You're advertising that you like something to your friends. That it's viewed as "not advertising" by so many is the reason it's so valuable, and why so much effort is being expended to manufacture and subvert it, since it's one of the last forms left people aren't super conscious of. "Telling other people about the thing" is the oldest and most basic form of advertising, but it's still advertising, and people have worked to exploit it since the earliest records we have. Hell, even Ea Nasir advertised via word-of-mouth.
This seems like it’s not going to be a productive conversation if you’re going to accuse me of using a strawman argument.
It seems like its not going to go anywhere because you think of all human communication as an act of manipulation.
Not all advertising is manipulation. The convo is going nowhere because you are No True Scotsmanning the definition of "advertisement".
If you're dropping a name of a product or service and describe anything about it to appeal to others, you are definitionally advertising.
... Run that one by me again? What??
Normally I look stores up using OSM and I believe I found my ISP through an comparison portal. Sure there could be advertisement involved and I definitely bought many things because of it. I just don't think we would need that in any way and that the quality of life would even go up if we banned all advertisement.
Its definitely not feasible, at least not in our life times. In my city there was a citizen initiative to ban a lot of public advertisements which did not went through as there were not enough people signing up. So apparently we are not ready for that yet. Burning all the advertising execs does sound like a sensible thing to do though :) Lets settle on that.
I see what you're saying, but the obvious distinction here is that if someone is actively searching e.g. Google for a product, they don't mind being shown products (and by extension being advertised to) - they're actively seeking it out. What everyone has a problem with is being shown advertisements for products when they aren't seeking them out and in fact actively want to avoid them.
Thank you! The unending intrusiveness of modern advertising really has killed and buried the useful parts of advertising by becoming the norm, I wholeheartedly agree.
In the ancient days we had a thing called the yellow pages.
Just FYI, any entry in the Yellow Pages other than the plain text, non-bold, name+phone number format entries were also paid for advertisements.
Yeah, exactly!
The search results are ads. If I'm looking to buy a table, those don't inherently come with a webpage. The website in its entirety is an ad.
making an item accessible to being searched for is a form of advertising
I walk to the store, I check what's there, I ask an employee for help, then make my own decision. If it's shit, I don't get it again and tell who I know to avoid it. I don't get products that people I trust have had bas experiences with.
Advertisements are lying. Every dollar spent on marketing is a dollar that could have been spent either improving your product or paying your staff. If you advertise to me, I will actively avoid your product.
You walk to what store? How do you know the store exists? How do you know what the store sells? What if you live in a small town that doesn't have a store that sells the required thing? How do you know where to drive to to? All this basic information about the store itself is coming from advertising. It's not just about popups annoying you online.
When I moved to my current town, the first thing I did was figure out where all the grocery stores, the post office, and the library are. Do you really rely on advertising to tell you what to do? You can just see grocery store and say, "Yes, they probably sell cheese" and then go in?
Ok, what store do you go to in your town for specialized tools to fix your car?
The auto parts store across the street from the grocery store
It sounds like you're considering the sign above a store to be an advertisement.
It is. Why do you think store logos aren't just a plain text sign on the door? That would be far cheaper for the store to do.
...yes?
I mean, that's why mattress stores have so many physical locations. They're the closest thing to a clickable ad IRL, since they mostly exist as oversized billboards with a store attached
So you look for items in blank white cardboard boxes that only have a technical definition of the item contained inside?
Logos and packaging are advertising the product inside. Your friends recommending you a product is advertising that product. A company having a website is advertising. The grocery store advertising that an item is on sale is...advertising. It's all advertising.
What we actually hate is intrusive and malicious advertising as well as false advertising. Like billboards. Fuck billboards.
Consent is a key factor.
If you mail me an ad? Fuck you.
If I search out your service and find you? Okay. Though people game this system obviously. Google used to fight back against this but now they don’t care and even have just given in, allowing pay to play. So fuck that too
I think an even more important aspect to me is something I don't have a good term for, but something like honesty/intrusiveness. The key issue is that advertisement should be an honest, truthful, non-deceitful representation of a good/service. But instead ads are designed to catch your eye, insert themselves into your thoughts with catchy music, play on your emotions even using kids, all while avoiding really telling you what they're about.
On the note of consent, it reminds me of a certain website for webnovels, which hosts ads submitted by users, for their own novels. It's been kind of ruined by GenAI, but it feels very different when the ads are often badly made memes about the premise of the story, since that's what you're already on the site for and it's the actual authors wanting to share their stories.
it's inherently unethical to me because these companies have decided without my consent that they're entitled to my attention
Advertising is attention rape
Let's say I go to an Invasion Day rally where thousands of people are protesting against the current date of Australia Day because it celebrates colonialism. I bring with Me a stack of flyers about the pro-Palestine rally in two weeks. I hand them out to protesters and say "There's more colonialism happening right now in Palestine. Come to this protest too."
- Am I advertising?
- Is it ethical?
Some local news sites in my city show local ads that are simply static images loaded in their pages, mimicking traditional newspaper ads, without any kind of tracking. Although it's questionable at a philosophical level if ads can be ethical, I can live with it, and that method will pass automated adblockers, so it's a win-win.
You know, I think I’d be okay with that. As long as it’s not something that’s begging for your attention or trying to get you to click on it.
Or loading at random intervals so you have to scroll around to find where you were before the page jumped around. Very little infuriates me more.
I could almost live with ads if they were static, but the typical article-reading experience without afblock goes like this:
See the first paragraph. Start reading. An autoplay video pops in at the top of the page obscuring the view. You scroll down but it's pinned to the top of the viewport. You close it with the miniscule x button. You finish the first paragraph and scroll down past a huge ad to the next paragraph. A banner ad appears at the bottom of the page. You dismiss it with the x. You start reading and two seconds later the banner you dismissed reappears with a new ad, obscuring the content again. You try to dismiss it, but miss and open the ad. Press back in the browser and start again from step 1.
Its exhausting, and it's so painfully constrained, like trying to view a webpage by peeking at it through someone's letterbox.
The Internet with ads, as it stands, is not worth seeing.
Not to mention it greatly lowered the quality of content. Now it's 95% getting a catchy clickbate title with the actual body often not even agreeing with the title. It's fucking exhausting.
I think the biggest issue with personalised ads is that they can exploit weaknesses in people are prevent public discourse about themselves (since they're different for everyone), which is especially bad for political ads. So these ads that you're describing seem good in my book.
Ads are violence on the mind.
Adblocking is good security.
Adblock is digital self defense against malware for your pc, as well as your mind.
https://xcancel.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1569083806224715776
ad blockers are necessary to effectively navigate the internet
fandom.com is bad WITH an adblocker, i would never consider opening it without one
anyone who would seriously think using adblock is unethical is a bootlick
They certainly are. I met one of those people in the middle, and they also had interesting opinions on other things like immigration and women's sports...
I'm old enough to remember when the internet managed to end banner ads, popup ads, and flashing ads....
I remember when the white box Google Ad Words(?) first started appearing in sidebars of sites and being creeped out that they kind of knew what I was in to. Now that is everywhere.
I remember it before ads...
Adblock smart is high iq.
This seems flipped, there's no way a majority of people like ads.
Maybe it should be Low IQ are people who don't know what an ad blocker is, and High IQ are people who say ad blocking is unethical.
This seems flipped, there's no way a majority of people like ads.
Honestly from some of the interactions I've had with my peers I didn't even think of the meme as strange.
Like one time I saw my roommate running Opera GX of all browsers without any adblockers and I asked him "don't these ads bother you?" and he responded, I shit you not, "no, quite the opposite! they're really helpful!". I didn't say anything because at that moment I was genuinely stunlocked.
I had a similar experience with a work colleague. His response? "They are helpful. They tell me what to buy". I guess some people are just like that.
How do you guys learn about the newest products and services available?
This might surprise you, but if you walk around town you get bombarded with ads actually.
Fun fact: not where I live. Billboards are not allowed within 18 metres of a road, and any business signage has to be both on the property of the business and at least 4 metres away from the road. You can easily walk around down town and see exactly 0 ads and it is bliss.
I said walk though, not drive.
Funny that you have better laws than we do though...
I also said walk through. Doesn't matter where you are, walking or driving, you will not see ads for things unless you are actively looking at a business advertising itself.
I was confused because you were talking about roads, sorry. That sounds awesome...
No worries there! And it is quite nice, I must say.
Your adblocker doesn't protect you outside?
No, I didn't get the monthly subscription :(
i do not need that information
i know, crazy, but humans basically just need food and shelter to live
"newest products and services" is not in the hierarchy of needs
That’s such a weird thing to say. Ads don’t show you things that are good, if they were better products they wouldn’t need to press you over it. I can’t think of a time where I found something cool I didn’t know about through an ad, short of movie trailers that I actively sought out.
For example, a few years back I found out that safety razors shave closer, give me less razor burn, and cost 100x less than cartridge razors. Which one of the two gets ads?
If there's something I want I'll search for that product category myself, and read reviews and comparisons from entities that aren't sponsored.
Turns out when I need a thing I can look for it without a company trying to prey on my insecurities
I don't.
I think you’re just used to the lemmy(/reddit) crowd. Pretty much everyone I casually know has ads when they show me something on youtube. Every time I ask “Why not use an adblocker?” they reply either “The ads don’t bother me” or “I want to support the content creators”.
Doesn’t make sense to me. I’ll buy some swag or donate to creators I like, but I am not voluntarily watching ads.
The majority of people just aren't bothered by them.
I know several people who only watched the Superbowl for the advertisments / halftime show.
Regardless of how shitty it is, one of the big cultural touchstones is also the advertisements they played on tv when someone was growing up. A lot of people use ads as another way to connect with a new person; meeting a other local to your area means you can mention a particularly overplayed ad from childhood and likely be able to find another person who saw it growing up too.
A lot of people use ads as another way to connect with a new person; meeting a other local to your area means you can mention a particularly overplayed ad from childhood and likely be able to find another person who saw it growing up too.
Do you think this is true for younger generations than millennials? Obviously ads with high production value like matt damon's fortune favors the brave gets talked about, but I don't know anyone who makes cultural references to a generic ad on TV or YouTube with average production value. I think for the average advertisement nowadays, there's too much saturation of content and not everyone watching ads, that you couldn't have a normal ad like this mundane Sears Air Conditioner commercial be ingrained in kids memories.
You know, I expect that the generational divide will change which ads people connect over, but I don't think that the majority of people will stop using them as a way of connection.
The new hotness is making fun of raid shadow legends, and I expect there's several others I just don't know about as well.
I'd say you just need to swap the label for adblock unethical and adblock smart.
Ad networks are known to be a large distributor of malware and scams.
it’s prudent to block ads.
Adblockers came up in conversation with a (non-techie) friend the other day and they said they don't have one because they are afraid they'd "get the wrong one" or end up with a virus trying to download "something like that" because they've had trouble with those shady download websites that have a ton of fake download buttons... Like, they look at adblocker as if it is the most scandalous form of piracy or something.
Old bit of computer lying around? Adguard DNS baby
Hell yeah. I like it better than PiHole, but that’s basically just personal preference.
I've been with the monk since the days of recording shows to VHS to fast forward past the commercials.
who are these people in the middle
i do not recognize them
Largely bootlickers and trolls, they don't exist in as great of numbers as the OP's post implies. The ones on the left are far FAR more common.
galaxy brain: adblock with badblock ethical whitelist and badblock emergency whitelist is ethical
Okay, that's based too
AdNauseum has a built in whitelist for ethical ads which I'm happy to leave enabled. I see them on some blogs I read and on the option search page for Home Manager.
I habe been at all three of these stages in my life, so this seems pretty accurate
i'm quite curious about your "adblock unethical" phase because... the fuck?
Seriously, the fuck? In what world is it unethical to opt out of having trash thrown in my face?
The only argument ive seen with any weight is for content creators whose revenue stream is ad dependent, and even then sorry not sorry im not turning off ublock
I think everyone who can uses ublock, no?
I didn't see an ad in actual years, and went to a friend's house a day ago and saw a singular ad, I instantly got whiplash like "holy crap, people actually live like this". Feels like a lack of standards almost
ye its awful---- how can peeps live with that-
don't think this is how bell curves work
No? If you were to map out the general population's intelligence, wouldn't it come out on a bell curve just like this?
the majority does not think adblock is unethical